For past several weeks, thousands of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Jharkhand have been left in the lurch. They had planted urd and til crops in a large acreage, and to their dismay no grain formation took place in the standing crop. Unable to bear the economic loss, at least four farmers have reportedly committed suicide. Thousands of farmers have been pushed deeper into economic distress....

The National Advisory Council (NAC) will meet here on Friday to discuss the working group's draft of the National Food Security Bill. The draft suggests the setting up of an autonomous body for grievance redress and enforcement of penalties. The authority could function along the lines of the national and State-level commissions set up under the Right to Information Act. The draft Bill defines the penalties for violations of the Act, and...

The National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Sonia Gandhi, will give final shape to a draft food security law incorporating its suggestion of differential legal entitlement of foodgrains to nearly 800 million people through a reformed PDS network. Some members of the NAC were keen to on drafting the food security bill themselves and we will discuss the matter on Friday, a member of the advisory panel told PTI. "Our endeavour...

It is quite likely that a few weeks from now someone will be knocking at your doors and asking for your fingerprints. If you agree, your fingerprints will enter a national database, along with personal characteristics (age, sex, occupation, and so on) that have already been collected from you, unless you were missed in the “Census household listing” earlier this year. The purpose of this exercise is to build the National...

After 16 days of intensive Statewide campaigning and 47 days of dharna, thousands of workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Rajasthan scored a significant victory. Led by the Suchana Evum Rozgar Ka Abhiyan, they entered into an agreement with the State government under which they would be entitled to the prevailing minimum wage for their day's work. Describing this outcome as “historic,” social activist...